My smallholding
at Filleighmoor Gate
After almost twenty years at Pennard Pottery in Somerset
I have uprooted myself and moved about a hundred miles
to west Devon - Red Ruby country - and an eleven acre
smallholding on which I shall keep a few animals and
poultry.
There is a lot to learn and a lot to do in order to
configure the whole site to my needs. Because haymaking
is so close to my moving in I shall, in this first year,
get a contractor but, in subsequent years, look forward
to doing some or all of it myself.
The pottery may take some time to get going; the barns
which are suitable need quite a lot of work to transform
them into spaces where I can, for instance, build a kiln
and locate the dough-mixer.
Patience is a virtue - apparently.......
The Filleighmoor Gate crossroads
from my yard
Stables and loose-box
Main barn for equipment and hay
Hay barn above the house
Distant Dartmoor across one
of the paddocks
Permanent pasture 5 acre
Two of the six Jacob sheep
having a rest!
Me with the Orpingtons and Rhode
Island Reds
Two Buff Orpingtons posing as
Cranford ladies
Starting haymaking 15th June
Contract mowing
Starting the rowing-up 18th June
The view over the haybob from the
cab of the Massey 135
Some of the 625 bales of fragrant
meadow hay - finished stacking about
10:15pm on the 18th June - helped
enormously by fantastic weather.
Dawn shearing a Jacob ewe
Evening 19th June
Jacobs before and after shearing
Updated 21st June 2010